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Saturday, April 23, 2011

For St George's Day

It was England that came out slowly, as the late moon rose: his royal realm of Gramarye. Stretched at this feet, she spread herself away into the remotest north, leaning towards the imagined Hebrides. She was his homely land. The moon made her trees more important for their shadows than for themselves, picked out the silent rivers in quick-silver, smoothed the toy pasture fields, laid a soft haze of everything. But he felt that he would have known the country, even without the light. He knew that there must be the Severn, there the Downs and there the Peak: all invisible to him, but inherent in his home ...

He suddenly felt the intense sad loveliness of being as being, apart from right or wrong: that, indeed, the mere fact of being was the ultimate right. He began to love the land under him with a fierce longing, not because it was good or bad, but because it was.

1 comment:

Well, we didn't have a riot, despite there being a football match nearby. Indeed the two groups of supporters were friendly towards each other (and the match a draw). A contrast with the year when it was a three way confrontation on the streets: home, away, and the St George's day boys from out of town. Ugly.